1.
Stadium Australia
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Stadium Australia, commercially known as ANZ Stadium and formerly as Telstra Stadium, is a multi-purpose stadium located in the Sydney Olympic Park, in Sydney, Australia. Every year since the stadium was built, the New South Wales rugby league teams games in the State of Origin series have been played there. Also the stadium has hosted the annual National Rugby League grand final. The stadium also hosted the 2015 AFC Asian Cup final, in 2003 reconfiguration work was completed to shorten the north and south wings, and install movable seating. These changes reduced the capacity to 83,500 for a field and 82,500 for an oval field. Awnings were also added over the north and south stands, which allows most of the seating to be undercover, the stadium was also engineered along sustainable lines for example with the low use of steel in the roof structure in comparison to the Olympic stadiums of Athens and Beijing. The stadium lacked a naming sponsor in its formative years. In 2002, telecommunications company Telstra acquired the rights, resulting in the stadium being known as Telstra Stadium. This change took effect on 1 January 2008, in 2014, ANZ renewed the deal through to the end of 2017. In 1993, Stadium Australia was designed to host the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the attendance broke the old record of 102,569 set at the Odsal Stadium in Bradford, England for the Challenge Cup Final replay between Warrington and Halifax held on 5 May 1954. The first musical act held at the newly built stadium was the Bee Gees, consisting of Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb, on March 27,1999. The band had embarked on what would be their world tour as a group before the death of Maurice. The show was out with an attendance of 66,285. The stadium was not officially opened until June 1999 when the Australian National Soccer team played the FIFA All Stars, Australia won the match 3–2 in front of a crowd of 88,101. The event attracted a capacity crowd of 82,698. The 1999 Bledisloe Cup rugby union match between the Australian Wallabies and the New Zealand All Blacks attracted a record rugby union crowd of 107,042. In 2000 this was bettered when an almost capacity crowd of 109,874 witnessed the Greatest ever Rugby Match when a Jonah Lomu try sealed an All Blacks win over the Wallabies 39–35. The All Blacks had led 24-nil after 11 minutes only to see Australia draw level at 24-all by halftime, an exhibition soccer match between the Socceroos and Premier League team Manchester United was played on 18 July 1999

2.
Heike Drechsler
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Heike Gabriela Drechsler German pronun­cia­tion, née Daute is a German and previously East German former track and field athlete. She is one of the most successful female long jumpers of all time and she is the only woman who has won two Olympic gold medals in the long jump. Drechsler was born in Gera, Thuringia, then East Germany, as a teenager she was active in the Free German Youth and in 1984 she was elected to the Volkskammer of East Germany. Initially a very competitive long jumper early in her career as a teenager, Drechsler made a transition into the world of elite sprinting in 1986 at the age of 21 and she married Andreas Drechsler in July 1984 and competed as Heike Drechsler from then on. She was coached by her Father inlaw Erich Drechsler, in addition to her Olympic success, Drechsler won two World Championships in the long jump, as well as gold medals in the long jump and the 200 m sprint in the World Indoor Championships 1987. She also had successes in European and German championships. Drechslers greatest rival in the jump was Jackie Joyner-Kersee, with whom she was also very good friends. In 1986, Drechsler twice equalled Marita Kochs 200 metres sprint world record, as of 2000, she had more than four hundred long jump competitions with results over seven meters, more than any other female athlete. According to a written by Ron Casey, In 1986 Drechsler made significant improvements to her 100 m and 200 m times. In one season she went from an 11. 75-second 100 m to 10.91 seconds and her 200 m time improved from 23.19 seconds to 21.71 seconds in the 1986 season. Her 21.71 second performance for 200 m was run into a wind of -0.8 m/s. By comparison, Marita Kochs 21.71 second runs in 1979 and 1984 had tail winds of +0.7 m/s and +0.3 m/s respectively. Drechslers 200 m performance of 21.71 seconds into a wind is one of the fastest ever run by a woman in the history of track. Several German websites, including her own, claim that Heike Drechsler was voted Athlete of the Century in 1999 by the IAAF and this is not quite correct, she was put on the shortlist, but the award was given to Fanny Blankers-Koen. The jump is 11 cm longer than the current world record,1986,21.71 seconds in Jena 1986,21.71 seconds in Stuttgart 1981,5891 Points 1994,6741 Points in Talence There were many accusations of drug use while she competed for East Germany. In 1991, after the fall of East Germany, Brigitte Berendonk and Werner Franke found several theses, the basis of the work reconstructed state-organized doping practices involving many well-known GDR athletes, including Heike Drechsler. Indications were that Heike Drechsler used high doses of Oral Turinabol plus more testosterone ester injections before competitions from 1982 to 1984, in 1993, Drechsler challenged Brigitte Berendonk, accusing her of lying in a lawsuit. In the case, the full annual dosage schedules, and charts of the development of performance as a function of the dosage amount, were released

3.
Fiona May
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Fiona May Iapichino is a retired British-born Italian track and field athlete who competed in the long jump. She won the World Championships twice and two Olympic silver medals and her personal best jump was 7.11 metres, which was her silver medal result at the 1998 European Championships. She also competed briefly in triple jump, and her career best of 14.65 metres from 1998 was good enough to place fifth in the world that season, may originally competed for Great Britain, but married Gianni Iapichino and became an Italian citizen in 1994. Iapichino, a pole vaulter whose best achievements were a fifth and sixth place at the European Indoor Championships in 1992 and 1994, was her coach as well. May gave birth to a daughter in 2002, and missed the season as a result. Her last significant competition to date was the 2005 World Championships, may attended Leeds Trinity & All Saints College, a college affiliated the University of Leeds, studying economics, business management and administration. In 2006 she retired from competitions and started a new career in show business. After some modelling, she became the spokeswoman of the Kinder snacks, later that year her acting debut was broadcast on Rai Uno as the protagonist of Butta la luna, a miniseries about racism and social integration. She is also rugby player Marcel Garveys cousin and her daughter, Larissa Iapichino, is following her parents footsteps and is currently the 300 metres hurdles Italian champion

4.
Italy at the 2000 Summer Olympics
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Italy competed at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. 361 competitors,246 men and 115 women, took part in 175 events in 29 sports, the mens team, which returned two members of the bronze medal-winning 1996 squad, did even better in 2000. They defeated the United States in the semifinal to guarantee themselves at least a silver medal, the Korean men, however, ensured that the Italians did not win the gold medal by defeating them in the final. The Italians went 2-5 in the round, defeating the Netherlands

5.
Tatyana Kotova
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Tatyana Vladimirovna Kotova is an athlete who competes for Russia in the long jump. Her personal best jump of 7.42 m at Annecy in 2002, is the best distance achieved by a long jumper in the 21st century. Kotova won bronze medals in the event at the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games and she won three consecutive silver medals at the World Championships in Athletics from 2001 to 2005, also taking bronze in 2007. She had even greater success indoors, where she won the World Indoor Championships on three occasions, in 1999,2003 and 2006, as well as finishing as runner-up in 2001 and 2004 and she was later stripped of her 2005 World silver and 2006 World Indoor title. Her other titles include wins at the 2002 European Championships and the 2002 IAAF World Cup and she was third at the 2001 Goodwill Games and was the jackpot winner of the 2000 IAAF Golden League. Kotova was born in Kokand, Uzbek SSR, and grew up in Taboshar and she started to take up track and field in 1995, previously also practicing volleyball and basketball. Training in Barnaul, West Siberia, Kotova won a medal at the European U23 Championships in Turku, Finland. She was injured in a car accident in August 2000, Kotova managed to both win and lose medals due to doping. In the 2000 Olympics, she had finished fourth. She was promoted to the bronze medal nine years later, after original bronze medal winner Marion Jones admitted usage of performance-enhancing drugs during the Olympics, however, in 2013, samples from the 2005 World Championships were retested and Kotova was found to have been doping. She was stripped of her medal at the World Championships. Tatyana Kotova profile at IAAF Tatyana Kotova Pictures

6.
Russia at the 2000 Summer Olympics
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Russia competed at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. 435 competitors,241 men and 194 women, took part in 238 events in 30 sports. The Russian men came close to winning their first medal since beginning to compete individually when they won their semifinal in the team round, however, in the three-arrow tie-breaker, the Americans scored a 29 to the Russians 26 to prevent them from winning a medal

7.
2000 Summer Olympics
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It was the second time that the Summer Olympics were held in Australia, and also the Southern Hemisphere, the first being in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1956. Sydney was selected as the host city for the 2000 games in 1993, the United States won the most medals with 93, while Australia came in 4th with 58. The games cost was estimated to be A$6.6 billion, the Games received universal acclaim, with the organisation, volunteers, sportsmanship and Australian public being lauded in the international media. Bill Bryson from The Times called the Sydney Games one of the most successful events on the world stage, admit there can never be a better Olympic Games, and be done with it, as Sydney was both exceptional and the best. These were the final Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch and these were also the second Olympic Games to be held in spring. The final medal tally was led by the United States, followed by Russia, several World and Olympic records were broken during the games. With little or no controversies, the games were deemed successful with the rising standard of competition amongst nations across the world. The Australian city of Melbourne had lost out to Atlanta for the 1996 Summer Olympics four years earlier, the Oxford Olympics Study 2016 estimates the outturn cost of the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics at USD5 billion in 2015-dollars and cost overrun at 90% in real terms. This includes sports-related costs only, that is, operational costs incurred by the committee for the purpose of staging the Games. The competition venues, the Olympic village, international broadcast center, and media and press center, which are required to host the Games. The cost and cost overrun for Sydney 2000 compares with a cost of USD4.6 billion, average cost for the Summer Games since 1960 is USD5.2 billion, average cost overrun is 176%. In 2000, the Auditor-General of New South Wales reported that the Sydney Games cost A$6.6 billion, many venues were constructed in the Sydney Olympic Park, which failed in the years immediately following the Olympics to meet the expected bookings to meet upkeep expenses. In the years leading up to the games, funds were shifted from education and it has been estimated that the economic impact of the 2000 Olympics was that A$2.1 billion has been shaved from public consumption. Economic growth was not stimulated to a net benefit and in the years after 2000, in the years after the games, infrastructure issues have been of growing concern to citizens, especially those in the western suburbs of Sydney. Proposed rail links to Sydneys west have been estimated to cost in the order of magnitude as the public expenditure on the games. Although the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony was not scheduled until 15 September, among the pre-ceremony fixtures, host nation Australia lost 1–0 to Italy at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which was the main stadium for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. The opening ceremony began with a tribute to the Australian pastoral heritage of the Australian stockmen and it was produced and filmed by Sydney Olympic Broadcasting Organisation and the home nation broadcaster, Channel 7. This was introduced by a rider, Steve Jefferys

Gold medallist Nancy Johnson (centre) of the U.S., raises her hands with silver medallist Cho-Hyun Kang (left), of South Korea, and bronze winner Jing Gao (right), of China, during the first medal ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games.